


He's like a beat without a melody

by Splatx



Series: Evan, also known as "This is a Bad Idea(TM) [12]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Age Difference, F/M, Falling In Love, Graphic Depictions of Illness, I suck at tagging, Idiots in Love, Illnesses, Injury, Major Character Injury, Near Death Experiences, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, She has a lot of horses, Slow Burn, more now there's been more added I'm in love with
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:41:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28031808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Splatx/pseuds/Splatx
Summary: Horley's life, for almost as long as he could remember, had revolved around the LeClerk family.He'd served his mistress since before she'd married her husband, since long before either of them had gone gray. Romance had never crossed his mind, was never something he had time for.So surely the attention he paid to Evan was simply because she was the most promising out of the folk they'd broken out of prison?
Relationships: Horley/Red Dead Online Protagonist
Series: Evan, also known as "This is a Bad Idea(TM) [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1876702
Kudos: 4





	1. She's young, scrappy and hungry

**Author's Note:**

> **Fun Fact!** Horley pays the men who break you out of the prison wagon $50 each. From what I can find, Online takes place in 1898, one year before the main game, so she gave each one the equivalent of $1,544.54, and spent $3,089.08 total to bust one person out. 
> 
> And that’s not even counting how much she would spend to outfit them with horses, clothes, and guns!

###  _[Is it] a beat without a melody[?]_  
~My Shot, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Daveed Diggs, Leslie Odom Jr., Anthony Ramos, Okieriete Onaodowan

###  _[I'm] young, scrappy and hungry_  
~My Shot, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Daveed Diggs, Leslie Odom Jr., Anthony Ramos, Okieriete Onaodowan

The amount of people that Amos Lancing had condemned to death was horrifying.

  
  


Horley’s mistress had spent more money than he was sure he’d ever had pass through his hands in his lifetime breaking them out and outfitting them. Some had stuck around, spitting fire and wanting nothing more than to get revenge on the man who had had them locked up for a murder they’d not committed. Others had fled, hadn’t looked back. Some of them what had fled had left the surrounding states, intending on starting anew, while others had stayed in the surrounding states and done as they wished.

He’d have preferred that more had stayed around, had paid back his mistress. She’d provided them with a horse - it may not have been a good one, but even a feedlot horse wasn’t terribly cheap - clothes, decent guns, and had paid one hundred dollars apiece to break them loose of the prison wagons. 

The ones that had didn’t remain in their camp, of course. They roamed, camped and did odd jobs. Old Man Jones had been spot on with all of them - those what he’d said had black marks on their souls took to doing the devil’s work, robbing and stealing and killing, taking work, he heard, from those that were even worse than they. And those who Jones said were ‘gooduns’ often were, did deliveries, hunted and did mailruns, took small jobs wherever they went to put money in their pockets, broke horses to sell.

Say what you will about crazy Old Man Jones, but he could judge a man’s character from a state away.

  
  


There was one woman, though, Jones couldn’t seem to draw a bead on.

She called herself Evan, though like many of the folk his mistress broke out he doubted it was her real name. Jones waffled on whether she was a ‘goodun’ or whether her soul was tarred with sin, and it seemed every time they met he changed his mind. And even Horley and his mistress weren’t entirely certain.

The woman had earned quite a name for himself, and it didn’t seem a week could go by without him hearing of her. Had, with the help of that senile old man they’d put her up with, made a decent little trading company. Had some other outlaws shaking in their boots at the sound of her name, she’d earned such a name for herself as a bounty hunter (and, he knew, she’d even brought in some of the sin-stained folk he’d helped to break out of prison. It was no great loss after hearing what they’d done after being set free), and with the help of the previously-thought-deceased Maggie Fike cornered the market as a bootlegger.

Of all the folk that they’d been able to save from Lancing’s machinations, she’d been the most intriguing, most promising and useful. When they called, she _always_ came running, loyal as any dog.

That was why, Horley tried to convince himself as he stitched up her side, he was using so much of their supplies to try and save her life when he’d have left the others to die.


	2. you can reach, reach out your hand

###  _You can reach, reach out your hand_  
~You Will Be Found, Ben Platt

Of the seventy or so people that they’d broken out of prison, only twenty three had hung around and kept in contact with them. Between Evan and other bounty hunters, predators and illness and the other sorts of hazards, only seventeen still breathed.

That wasn’t to say they had seventeen people at their disposal, though. When they reached out, only a handful responded - and they were never certain who it would be. They often went weeks without hearing from Old Lady Ida, and Willie Whittaker, who’d had the sour luck to be visiting family when Lancing had struck, tended to get distracted, and seldom showed up even if he sent back that he was on his way. Horley had only met Herbert Jenners, a shepherd once-upon-a-time, twice, once when he’d been breaking him out of a prison wagon and the other when they’d cut down Teddie Brown.

  
  


Always, though, Evan came running.

Like a dog to its master, she’d come trotting up on one of her horses, eyes keen and ready to obey, guns gleaming at her side. And it wasn’t just to Horley and his Mistress that she was loyal - when Marshal Davies needed help, there she was at his side, and when Samson Finch whistled she sniffed at his heels. She held no true morality he could see - upheld the law for the Marshall, but spurned it when Finch was in need of her help. If it lined her pockets, so it seemed, then she would do it.

But he’d heard tell of her. How she’d stop and help someone free their legs from a bear trap, offer them an expensive miracle cure, buy only the cheapest thing when they insisted on paying her back. Riding miles to rescue someone's’ kidnapped friend or to bring a sick man home. He’d also, though, heard of her freeing a hunter from his own trap only to turn around and rob him, to lasso someone off their horse for seemingly no reason and drag her behind her own for half a mile even after he’d long stopped screaming.

Still, though, he could count on her to always come when they called, and so what she did on her own time concerned only her. So long as she left his Mistress’s name out of it, at least.

  
  


When they’d been summoned to Blackwater by Amos Lancing, they’d sent letters to every one of the now twelve that still lived. They were no fools, and had no inclinations that Amos had good motives.

Seven wrote back.

Four showed up.

It was no surprise to Horley when Evan trotted up, a horse he’d never seen before beneath her, tall and dark with a light face, offering him a deferential inclination of her head before urging her horse to wait not far from their carriage.

She took to his word as though it were gospel when they spoke, reaffirming what they’d said in their letters - that they were meeting with Amos Lancing and thought he had nefarious plans. That he worried for his mistress’s safety (and she wasn’t terribly happy with him for that) and needed back up.

He’d have been happier had they had all seven, but it was what it was so he sat in the carriage as Lucas Fletcher took the reins and the rest rode guard around them, Evan’s stallion snorting unhappily until the woman gave them a wider berth to keep from distracting the stallion and mare that pulled them.

  
  


In Blackwater, Evan disappeared. She was there one moment and gone the next, and it was only as they were approaching Lancing that he, scanning the rooftops, spotted the gleam of her rifle’s scope and then the tip of her hat though, if he hadn’t known what to look for, he’d never have seen it. He gave the slightest inclination of his head in approval, then followed his Mistress as the other three flanked them.

Naturally, it all went wrong. His Mistress lost her temper and shot Lancing, and he had to yank her to safety as Evan went to work picking off Lancing’s men on the rooftops, Thompson Jade and Russel Sims working with Fletcher to clear the streets. Evan (she’d never provided a last name, and he’d never asked) jumped down from the roof, staggering before catching herself, and jogged over to them, mouth drawn tight, and looked at Horley as though to say ‘what now?’

He bid some of them to join him as he went after Shaw and some to go with his lady but, of course, only Evan trailed him - he rather thought the men were trying to impress his lady but she was still grieving and so it served only as a source of amusement for the two of them - covering his back as they worked their way up through Lancing’s men and towards the bank.

Like an enforcer, she stood behind him as he demanded the papers (forgeries, as he knew them to be) from Shaw before turning about and hurrying back to his lady though, from the sounds of it, he thought she was doing well enough on her own.

He told Evan to leave the man alive but, as he walked away, he heard the sharp crack of a gun, and was not sorry in the least for it.

  
  


The carriage, naturally, almost ran him over as it flew around the corner. Evan made a funny sound low in her throat and grabbed the back of his coat, yanking him back, and he nodded his thanks as he jumped into the carriage, the woman whistled for, and mounting up on, her horse, the stallion crow-hopping unhappily as gunfire cracked through the air as more of Lancing’s men rode in.

  
  


They almost made it.

The creek was in sight when four - no, five - of Lancing’s men came flying over a hill. Fletcher fell dead from the carriage, head no more than mist at the end of his ragged neck, his mistress lunging to take control of the carriage before the horses could run wild and whipping them to run faster as the rest began to return fire - Sims’ horse collapsed under him and the man was crushed as it rolled over him - and then blood sprayed from Evan’s torso and she was in reach and his lady was yelling “Horley!” but already he was lunging, grabbing her arm and catching her as she pitched from the saddle, pulling her back and into the carriage, applying pressure to the wound as his lady guided the carriage, Jade shooting down the last of Lancing’s men.


End file.
